The winter solstice is here, December 21, 2025. It’s what I like to call the long winter’s night. The nadir of the natural world. I once read, to paraphrase, that it’s the ending, the death, of the cycle of life. Celebrating solstices is among the oldest traditions and rituals known to humans, along with storytelling (the great sagas, etc.) and burying the dead. This is the time to consider what…

Melt me

I do not ask for your blessing,

nor your forgiveness.

Your faith is a cage,

a straitjacket sewn with your expectations.

I stand here, excommunicated for my sins,

because I chose to live unchained.

I do not wear the dress you picked for me,

I do not bow to the rules of a heaven that cannot see me.

If being called a sinner is the price of being true,

then I pay it with pride.

My sin is desiring you until it hurts,

letting go without fear,

burning beneath the weight of my own hunger.

The devil behind the mask of a man

has awakened me,

taught me to look into the abyss within,

to no longer fear the dark that burns and breathes.

And every time he is near,

the fire rises in me,

a flame that devours shame,

that shatters fear,

that screams freedom,

the freedom to be myself, slave and queen all at once.

And if the world dares to call me excommunication,

I answer with a smile of fire,

knowing there is no sweeter hell than the one I choose with him.

No paradise more bitter than a life dimmed without his command.

So yes,

I am the devil dressed as an angel.

I am his temptation and his surrender.

I am the end and the beginning

of everything he never dared to want.

Come with me,

guide my submission,

or stay in your prison,